It's always funny/curious to listen to other people's appraisals of your life. I think we've all had that happen to us in one way or the other. We hear somebody talking to somebody else about us… Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. But, I think at the essence of that all and that everything is that they're not us. So, they can never really understand us. Really, how about you? Have you heard other people describing you? How right were they? Or, how wrong were they?
 
I have a lot of people out there who communicate with me via various means. Some, I personally know. A lot, I’ve never meet. …At least not on the person-to-person level. This being said, 99.99% of all of them are super nice, super positive people. They understand what I'm doing and what I'm about. Or, they at least try to understand what I am and what I'm about.
 
From all those everybody’s out there, I get handed a lot of dishes of a lot of stuff that I really wouldn't be eating if it wasn't put right in front of me. Even then, I turn a lot of it away. I'm being metaphorical here, of course. But, in other words, people either give me, show me, point me to, or tell me about stuff that's created, written, and/or whatever-ed about me.
 
I took a very short, bounced through listen, to this one person's discourse that was presented to me today. It was a piece about me. They spoke about myself, Donald G. Jackson, Zen Filmmaking, our filmmaking, my Zen Films, and a little bit about my biography; as little as they obviously know of it. Or, maybe better put, as little of it as they got correct. They were just trying to present their opinionated opinion of me. It made me smile, just a little.
 
Anyway, the thing that I found so curious about it is, they were really spouting off all of their knowledge as if they knew everything about me. …As if they were some sort of expert. It was really curious. I mean, they really came off like they knew me. But, I’ve never met this person. I don't even know who they are?
 
But, anyway/anyhow, and for me to get to the point here… They presented all this stuff as facts. They spoke about myself, Donald G. Jackson, our relationship, my movie making, my background, and they were almost one-hundred percent completely wrong. (And remember, Donald G. Jackson pass away over twenty years ago.) The fact is, they didn't understand me. They certainly don't understand my philosophy. They obviously didn't understand the relationship between Donald G. Jackson and myself. …Probably one of the best friends I ever had. Yet, they spoke about it/us like they knew.
 
I've spoken about the dichotomy of all of this kind of nonsense in the past, both here in this blog and elsewhere when I'm talking to people and stuff. As somebody who's been in the public eye for decades now, it just never ceases to amaze me why people waste focusing all of their attention on someone else? I mean, don't they have any internal creativity? Don't they want to go out there and create something uniquely their own? If they’re speaking about filmmaking and filmmakers, why don’t they get out there and make cinema? If you are truly an artist, why focus on the life of anyone else?
 
Anyway, and I guess that's the point of this piece… If you are an artist—if you are a creative, even if you only have aspirations to be one, there's only one way to do it, and that's to get out there and do it and create! Certainly, that’s what I've done my entire life. …In whatever form of art I was pursuing. I got out there and did it. From that doing, there's people who are out there talking about my doings. Yeah, they pretty much are one-hundred precent wrong about my motivations, my philosophies, my methods, my friendships, the personal me, and my everything… But, as the one who actually created something, I'm the one they're speaking about. So, think about that before you speak about anybody else. Do you want to be that creative person? …That individual that other people are speaking about? Or, is all you want to do is to pretend that you know something about somebody else, and speak about them and their creations? For me, that's an easy choice.
 
I said this a million times, if you think you know about art, get out there and create it! Stop thinking and talking about some other artist, who is actually creating art, as that equals no art at all.